IN
THE PRISONER: In "Many Happy Returns", Number Six awakens
on a beach and climbs a cliff, overlooking a lighthouse. In "The Girl Who
Was Death", Number Six follows Death to the interior of a rocket, destined
for London, which is disguised as a lighthouse. The lighthouse also appears
as a slide in "Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling".

IN
REALITY: This is Beachy Head Lighthouse, off the South coast of England.

LOCATION
REPORT: For the fantasy episode "The Girl Who Was Death"
a wide range of unique locations were used. The spectacular and rather dangerous
location of Beachy Head, and more specifically the famous red and white striped
lighthouse, was featured with the distinctive building doubling as Schnipps'
rocket that was to be launched against London. It was of course blown up in
the episode - or at least a special effects model of it was!

The building has had something of a charmed life since that time the with regular
coastal erosion of the chalk cliffs occasionally coming a little too close for
comfort. It faced real life danger in January 1999 when when thousands of tons
of cliff face collapsed into the sea effectively joining the base of the lighthouse
to the Sussex mainland. The astonished crew of a lifeboat operating three miles
off the coast spotted the incident, which was reportedly the largest single
loss of British coastline in living memory. A stretch of cliffface 200 yards
wide and up to 50 yards deep crashed into the sea effectively blocking the channel
between the cliff and the lighthouse used by tourist boat trips to view the
impressive coastline and the unmanned lighthouse (see bottom-right photo).

In 2011
a campaign was begun to save the lighthouse's iconic red and white stripes.
Click HERE
for more details. Originally the light house did not have red and white stripes,
but was in it's original grey granite colour. At some point and up until 1951,
it was given black stripes, and then it was decided to paint it red and white
stripes to make it more prominent.